io9: Civilization

Computer simulation reveals why it's hard to export democracy to the world

Alasdair Wilkins — Thu, 29 Sep 2011 08:00:00 PDT

Why are so many societies based on hierarchy rather than egalitarian values, despite the fact that evidence suggests ancient human communities were often fairly egalitarian? Stanford researchers wanted to find out. So they designed a computer simulation that compared two basic types of societies: egalitarian ones, in which all resources are shared equally, and hierarchical societies, in which some groups have greater access to resources than others. More »

Computer teaches itself English so that it can play Civilization

Alasdair Wilkins — Tue, 12 Jul 2011 16:00:00 PDT

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Computers may be naturally fluent in binary, but how might they fare with learning human languages? Computers were tested by playing the game Civilization. Random chance let them win about half the time...but then they started reading the instruction manual. More »

10 Scariest Asteroid Attacks on Earth: The Near Hits and Approaching Terrors

Michael Reilly — Fri, 20 Jun 2008 12:20:00 PDT

When it comes to comet impacts, the denizens of Earth may be living on borrowed time. Of course, comets are only about half the problem — there are plenty of asteroids whizzing around the inner solar system too — so we decided to have a look and see just how close modern society has come to destruction since 1900, and how close we're going to come over the next 100 years. The answers, provided in our nifty infographic, aren't reassuring. More »